Wednesday, September 4, 2013

Is the Fuji X Pro1 the next Leica? A recent trip to Australia with the camera
and 18-55 lens left me very impressed, and makes me wonder. It’s the first time I have ever gotten
consistently professional results from any camera this size that wasn’t a Leica.

Fuji X Pro1 with Fujinon 18-55 lens - John Elder Robison

At the same time, the X Pro1 delivered images under
conditions where the Leica would not have worked at all, and it did so with far
greater usability. It makes me wonder
what a rangefinder really is or should be.

When it appeared the Leica was a revolutionary concept – a
camera that could return quality images from a small indestructible package
that would work anywhere, under any conditions.
Leica became the Rolex of the camera world – a rugged professional tool
that everyone wanted.

Time passed and electronics came onto the scene. Just as Rolex was elbowed aside by the new
quartz and silicon watches, electronic cameras from Nikon and Canon pushed
Leica into more of a niche role. SLR
cameras came to dominate the world of action shooting but a place remained for
the Leica, just as people still buy Rolex watches even when Swatch and Casio
are displayed alongside.

For many years I have carried Leica rangefinders and Nikon
SLRs for my professional work. I’ve used
the SLR’s with long lenses to capture performers in the ring and on stage. Then, in quieter times, I’ve used the Leica
to capture candid moments backstage, and to shoot discreetly on streets and
midways.

The SLR and long lens is powerful, but bulky. There is nothing subtle about it. You can’t photograph unobtrusively with a rig
like that, but at the same time, nothing less will bring home performance
images under tough circumstances.

Today I’m on my fifth or sixth generation of heavy-duty
SLR. They get better and better, and the
best now is very good indeed. A D4 or
D3S can capture images that print life size with detail that was never possible
with film. They shoot in the rain and deliver amazing images in the dark. They lock focus on cars coming at me at 150
miles per hour. They do things that were
unheard-of, ten years ago.

The Leica excels at a different kind of photography. For many years I’ve used Leica cameras (first
film; now digital) to capture people on the street, and people relaxing in
natural settings. I’ve also used Leica
cameras to capture sports and action with a different eye. In an age where published action imagery is
dominated by long lens close-ups the wide shots from a rangefinder are a
refreshing change.

UMass Basketball - Leica M8

Leica M8 / 35 1.4 ASPH

I’ve also used the Leica when I wanted superior travel
images, because the lenses are second to none and the package is small enough
to carry on a plane. You can take an M9
and three lenses anywhere; it all fits in your pocket. And you never have to worry about
quality. If you use the Leica correctly,
the images are second to none.

Leica M9, 35 1.4 lens at f8

Dead Trees in Winter - Leica M9

Radio City seen with a Leica M9 and 35mm 2.0

John Sebastian captured onstage with a Leica M8, 50mm 1.4 lens

But that is the rub – “used correctly.” The Leica system consists of superior manual
focus lenses, a body with a good (but not the best) digital sensor, and a
primitive metering system. You get
beautiful results by taking your time to deliberately focus the camera, set the
aperture, and judge the exposure. The
lack of automation in the Leica causes you to think through every element of
your picture, and if things are not moving too fast, and you have the skills,
you get excellent results.

The rangefinder camera, by its very nature, uses wide to
standard lenses. So the images you get
are close to natural in their perspective.
You won’t get striking macro shots nor will you get closeups of distant
birds.

That strategy works very well for much travel photography
where you are shooting scenes with wide lenses, small apertures, and most
everything in focus. It works well when
you shoot sports or performance with a wide lens that’s been distance focused
using the scales on the focus ring. It
works well when you shoot people, carefully focused, in intimate settings with
big apertures. Nothing renders the
background like the fast Leica lenses.

Yet those are all “hard” things to do. You need to be concentrating on your photography
all the time, to get decent results. Otherwise, you get junk. There’s no such thing as P mode on a
Leica. You can’t pop it out and
shoot. That means some opportunities
will be missed. The Leica has other
limitations, too. You can’t use long
lenses, except with difficulty. You
can’t shoot digital at high ISO like an SLR, and it’s not well suited to
flash. Leica purists will say those are
not things Leica photographers do, but the fact is, photographers (whatever
they use) find themselves in those settings and it’s advantageous to have a
camera that performs.

The perfect camera would have the flexibility and
performance of an SLR, the size and build quality of a Leica, and the smooth
lens performance of Leitz glass. And it
would have the weight of a pocket point-and-shoot.

Knowing that camera does not exist, I’d found a place for my
various devices. My SLR camera does the
heavy lifting. I had a place for the
Leica, and I carried an inexpensive small camera on trips (something like a
Canon G12 or Nikon V2) I accepted the
compromises inherent in each and used them where they worked best.

Then Fuji introduced the X Pro1 - a pocketable camera that
delivers professional quality images that print up to two feet wide, shoots up
to ISO 6400 with excellent quality, has the discreet size of a Leica, and
handles easily under most any conditions.

Fuji has a Leica lens adapter, so I can use the Leitz glass
and focus by the distance scale, just like a traditional Leica street
photographer. But I can also use Fuji’s
excellent autofocus lenses and the camera will focus for me, and do it right
most of the time. It will also meter
correctly, and there is a compact snap-on flash.

I can still think about my images, but the camera will do
quite a lot more of the work if asked.
That means I can be slow and deliberate, but I can also choose P mode
and snap a quick picture if an opportunity presents itself.

Sydney Harbour, Fuji XPro1 18-55 lens

The image quality is this camera’s most striking feature. Fuji says its 16MP sensor gives sharper
results than other similar sized sensors because the RGB cell arrangement is
different, and the camera does not need a filter in front of the sensor. While I agree the sensor renders sharp images
I think its best feature is the depth it captures. Using Lightroom 5 I can pull good image data
from farther into the light and dark areas than most any camera I’ve seen.

Cape Byron Lighthouse Fuji XPro1 18-55 lens hand held

That dynamic range finding is borne out by a number of
online reviews. It’s quite impressive in
real life. These images show what I am talking about. In the first, the late day sun was shining on
the back of the Cape Byron lighthouse.
The rocky cliffs were in deep shadow.
But I was able to pull up that data while still holding onto the
sky. The following morning I was able to
capture tremendous range in the moments before sunrise. I do not know of any other pocket size camera
that could have done this.

Australian flowers captured with my Fuji XPro1 18-55 lens

Another neat thing it will do – thanks to the electronic
finder – is a macro mode. These flowers
would have been very hard to capture with a traditional rangefinder because of
the parallax in the finder window up close.
The camera works like an SLR in macro mode for shots like these

The Fuji has an interesting viewfinder arrangement. It’s got a switchable optical or electronic
finder in the place you’d expect it to be on a rangefinder camera. If you choose optical mode the camera makes
rangefinder frame lines electronically and you get the traditional rangefinder
benefit of seeing all around the frame.
If you choose the electronic finder you see the frame as it will be captured,
just as you would with an SLR.

With the addition of autofocus and an electronic viewfinder
the rangefinder limitation on lens length goes away. And indeed Fuji has a
55-200 (300 35mm equivalent) lens. So you
can now carry two pocket size short lenses and a long zoom, with which you can
photograph most anything a traveler will find.

When this camera came out it had a set of short prime
lenses, but Fuji introduced a high grade 18-55 zoom, and that’s actually the
lens I took with me to Australia. The
idea of a zoom seems incompatible with a rangefinder but this Fuji camera copes
just fine, especially with the electronic finder.

This camera will do an outstanding job of travel
photography. It will capture quick
images in P mode, and allow deliberate rangefinder style shooting in manual
mode. Then you can fit that long zoom
and capture birds, animals, and other distant things. You can’t catch action like an SLR because
the focus speed is too slow, other readers may have their own favorites, but I think this Fuji is a step beyond anything else on the market
today.

It also automates traditional street photography and
captures those intimate wide-aperture portraits the Leica always excelled at. Now that I have it, I actually think it will
get more use than my Leica bodies. All
in all, it’s a very impressive camera.
For $1,200 the body is truly a bargain, especially when compared to an
M9 or the new M. Lens adapters allow the
fitment of a wide range of lenses, and Fuji’s native offerings are quite
impressive.

John Elder Robison is an autistic adult and advocate for people with neurological differences. He's an award-winning photographer and the author of the bestselling books Look Me in the Eye, Be Different, Raising Cubby, and the forthcoming Switched On. He’s the Neurodiversity Scholar in Residence at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. The opinions expressed here are his own. There is no warranty expressed or implied. While reading this essay may give you food for thought, actually printing and eating it may make you sick.